Race gap widens in wake of Simpson trial

October 4, 1995
Web posted at: 11:55 p.m. EDT

From Correspondent Candy Crowley

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The huge gap between black and white was as
close
as the color television during the Simpson trial. Why did whites and
African-Americans react so differently to the Simpson verdict? The
answer is as simple as it is painful.

Justice isn't always blind. We have seen it on the streets. "You
know
if you're a black kid, you get stopped on the street just for being
black," says a white New Yorker. "They had a police check on Ninth
Avenue. They were stopping the black teen-agers and making them get
out of their cars. You know, they don't do that to white kids as
readily."

"Black and whites have different realities in America," says a
black
man from Washington, D.C. "Blacks know what discrimination is, they
know what racism is, we have experienced it personally. Whites do not.
It's academic with them," he says.

And justice isn't always equal. Lawyers know that, and they teach
it. Jamin Raskin, associate dean of Washington College, says it's a
special part of instruction. "It is being blind to history not to
recognize that the criminal justice system has been trained on the
African-American community to try to control it, contain it, to break
its spirit," he says.

When blacks tuned into the Simpson trial, they watched through a
screen
of skepticism. Ronald Walters, chairman of the Political Science
Department at Howard University, says that blacks have had a
particular
relationship with the criminal justice system that has made them
suspicious and alienated from it. Walters says that they could
"therefore come to the conclusion, very easily, that Mark Fuhrman
tainted the results of the evidence."

When whites tuned in to the trial, they were prone to see it in a
different light. A white New Yorker says, "I tend to trust the police
as somebody who upholds law and order, but, you know, I'm white."

After years at his listening post as a public radio talk show host,
Derrick McGinty hears nothing in the wake of O.J. that he hasn't heard
before. "It's not just about this O.J. case. It's about the fact
that
America is divided, that people have real different perceptions, and
this just brought it to the surface," McGinty says.

The bright spot in this dim black and white picture may be that all
the
talk could lead to understanding. That assumes, however that people
will stop talking long enough to listen.

"I don't believe that African-Americans are genuinely listening to
those whites who say, 'How can you ignore all the overwhelming
evidence?'" says Cynthia Tucker, editorial page editor for the Atlanta
Constitution. "And I don't believe white Americans are genuinely
listening to those African-Americans who say, 'How can you discount
not
only the history African-Americans have had with the criminal justice
system, but the fact that a white police officer perjured himself in
this case?'" (748K AIFF sound or 748K WAV sound)